Bad Google!

Can anyone suggest a good online feed reader and webmail which doesn’t begin with a G?

Google Buzz created quite a stir from the start, with concerns over it’s privacy policy. The first time I logged in to see what all the buzz was about, I thought is was odd enough to see “followers” who I definitely know have never used ANY social media service. Some of them were probably just confused by the “Try Buzz” -notice and have since forgotten about it.

Look! You know all these people!

I only realized how totally screwed up the Buzz launch was after reading this post: F*ck you Google (summary: abusive ex-husband automatically added to follower list along with some not-so-nice crazy people who had emailed the author a lot). Apparently it has also been hard to get rid of Buzz, but the googlers might have corrected that (see below).

There’s been reason before not to trust Google in issues of privacy (*cough*Gmail ads*cough*) but this latest thing really seems to be a case of beating Facebook at the “we don’t care about privacy” game. Google does a lot of cool stuff (GReader, Gmail, Android, Wave etc.) so it’s really disappointing to see them pull something like this.

How to get rid of Buzz

Might have to start looking for a replacement. Meanwhile, apparently to get rid of Buzz you need to delete your Google Profile. To do so, go over to your Google account (https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount), click on “Edit profile” and then right at the bottom of the page click on “Delete profile and disable Google Buzz completely”.